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// I Miss It 
// Story: That Sinking Feeling 
// by The Sleepless Beholder 
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I don’t know exactly when I fell in this ocean, but by the time I realized, I could barely see the light of the surface. I try to swim up, but my body feels too tired, it moves easily in the water, but when I push against the gravity of the ocean it loses all strength, and I just keep sinking.

Sinking into darkness.

But it’s a slow descent, I can barely feel myself moving, almost like I’m stuck in the middle of this ocean. Looking around, the darkness seems to extend indefinitely, and while the thought of having sharks or other normal oceanic dangers surrounding me would be horrible, the silent darkness with absolutely no life was equally unsettling.

And then the voices came.

At first, they were just a dozen, but soon turned into almost a hundred, too many to keep track of who each of them was. I heard them coming from all around me, surrounding me like a crowd at a party, and making me feel even more alone.

They spoke in waves.

The first was their opinions of me. The way I looked, the way I talked, the way I thought, the way I spent my free time, the way I view the future, the way I view them and others, the way I view the world. I was never sure if hearing them behind me was worse than hearing them from the front.

And with every opinion, a comment soon followed. 

That was the second wave, their advice. “You should try looking like this.” “You shouldn’t talk like that.” “That’s wrong.” “You should be doing this.” “You should choose this.” “Don’t trust them, trust only me.” “This is how the real world works.” With all this advice coming from all around me, many contradicting themselves, the question of ‘Which one should I follow?’ was lost long ago.

The third wave was their gifts.

With how confused I was with all the advice and comments, I became lost, couldn’t tell right from wrong, truth from lie, which way was forward and which way was backwards. So, they helped me decide.
Clothes, books, education, hobbies, career paths, friends, opportunities, they would gift me everything, as long as I chose their options.

The fourth wave was their jokes.

There were the usual suspects; my weight, my hair, my clothes, my voice, my face. Then the unusual suspects; my ideas, my way of thinking, what I enjoyed, what I found interesting, what I wanted to do with my life. Everything that wasn’t already theirs was a joke.

And then there were the worst jokes; the ones about my progress.

Every time I decided to change something, even if it was for them, they made a joke out of it. The things that took me effort to do were mocked because they did it effortlessly.
And every time I started to get over my shyness, my awkwardness, my anxiety, they would make a show out of it, and I would go back to square one, until I just stopped showing my progress to avoid more embarrassment.

The fifth wave was their trust.

They always asked it from me, and it always came with a price:

Money, always in small quantities but never ending. Give one gift and they will expect more.

Favors, because obviously, you’re a good person, and a good person helps good people, and they’re good people, they always are. But you can’t forget that just one failed favor will wipe all good from you, and they won’t promise to help you anymore.

Secrets, this always comes unexpected at first. Suddenly, you find someone who cares about you, that takes interest in what you like, that wants to know more about you. You get confident, trusting, and tell them a secret about you, and that’s when you lose.
At best, your secret gets out by the next day, and its added to your social record. At worst, they won’t be able to hold it in. They will laugh in your face and tell it to the first person they see, even if you’re right there in front of them.
So, you learn to not trust anyone. Your secrets are yours and yours only, keep them locked, hidden, show no weakness. That way, they will have less ways to hurt you.

There’s a sixth wave, but I’ve heard enough. 

Finally, I sink further.

I notice that I’m not sinking by gravity, something is pulling me under. Something around my neck. A rope? A chain? Does it matter?

I suddenly remember that I’ve lungs, they feel full, but not with air. It’s a heavy gas that makes me feel like I’m suffocating, slowly burning my lungs.

I feel my heart beating, but it feels weak, each heartbeat takes effort, and any could be the last. And more than that, my heart feels diseased, rotten, out of place. 
I have the urge to take it out. Something tells me I can’t use it anyways.

Suddenly, I hear three loud bangs, and someone calls my name, angrily.

“Wallflower!” 

I snap out of my thoughts and take in my surroundings. I’m in my room, siting on my bed. It’s already dark, I must have tuned out for an hour or maybe more.
My cheeks are wet with tears, so I wipe them before turning on the lights and going for the door. When I open it, I’m greeted with the angry face of my sister.

“You were napping?” she asked annoyed.

“No, I was just… thinking,” I answer looking back at the imprint I left on my bed after sitting for so long.

“Yeah, sure, thinking,” she said crossing her arms. “Were you thinking about taking out the trash that’s stinking the kitchen?”

I shook my head, cursing internally at myself. “Sorry Fuchsia, I will go do it now.”

The answer only seemed to anger her more. “You can’t keep hiding from doing your chores! I’m won’t keep doing them for you.”

“I’m not hiding, I just forget,” I say avoiding eye contact.

“Well remember next time! You’re never doing anything important anyway. Is doing your half of the chores so hard for you?”

I lower my head. “I will try.”

“Try?” Fuchsia gritted her teeth. “You always say that you will try and then you do nothing, every, time.”

I say nothing, there’s no point in defending myself.

“You’re the most useless person I’ve ever met,” Fuchsia said before storming off to her room.

I close the door to my bedroom, go to the kitchen, pick up the trash, go outside, throw it in the bin, and sit beside it. Hugging my legs and looking down, I try to fall back into the ocean.

But I can’t. 

There’s no ocean.

There’s no creative interpretation of my problems that explain them and puts the blame in anybody other than me.

This is reality. 

And in reality, I’m just an idiot looking at the ground next to the trash, trying to convince myself that I’ve problems. 

I’ve no problems because I know exactly what to do to fix them.
Do my chores, obey my parents, study, pass my exams, get a degree, find a job, buy a small apartment, put a lock on the door and seal myself from my family, pay rent, do a hobby in my free time, die before reaching old age because I didn’t take care of my health. Maybe, if I’m lucky, I will find someone to form a family with between all that.

I just need to start. Flip that switch, pull myself by the bootstraps, turn my life around, or whatever iteration of the phrase I’ve heard.

But to ‘flip that switch’, I need to find the switch. And I don’t know if I even have it.

“Fuchsia is right… I’m useless.”

I miss the ocean.